A prize thesis on puerperal fever : for the degree of medicine in the University of New-York / by Ignacio Gutiérrez Ponce.

  • Gutiérrez Ponce, Ignacio.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A prize thesis on puerperal fever : for the degree of medicine in the University of New-York / by Ignacio Gutiérrez Ponce. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    — !23 — Epidemics in towns or cities, outside the hospi- tals, are exceedingly rare, with the exception of those pointed out as occurring under the practice of a certain physician; and this fact shows how much control upon the prevention of this disor- der will be obtained in private practice, by atten- tion to hygienic and prophylactic measures. PATHOLOGICAL ANATOMY, I shall be allowed to bring forth a comparison before considering this important point of the anatomical lesions. Let us suppose that we have a building full of wet and also dry straw. If we apply fire to the wet straw, the material will burn slowly and more or less feebly, although the fire may also burn some portions of the building. But if the fire ignites the dry material, or if we apply the flame to it in the first instance, then we shall observe a quick combustion, more or less violent, and its effects will be peculiar. In the uterus we have the lymphatics represent- ing the wet straw and the veins the dry material. The absorption through the former is the most frequent, a lymphatitis being the starting symp- tom. But this absorption is slow; the septic material is stopped, as it were, at each gland, and new centres of infection are formed, accom- panied by alternate recrudescency of the symp- . toms. Septicaemia is here well marked ; and in